Dr. Joyce Brothers, who paved the way for television figures as diverse as Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer and Dr. Drew Pinsky, and was essential in making the mass-cultural discussion of deep-seated and uncomfortable emotions in the U.S. a more open forum, died yesterday.

As my friend notes in the Los Angeles Times obituary—which quotes him from the Bergen Record (several years before):

"'She was the first to open up the public airwaves to private feelings. There was no one like that,' Ron Simon, curator of the Paley Center for Media in New York, said in 2006 in the Bergen County, N.J, Record. 'Now, so many programs deal with these intimate matters.'"

This is the first weekend showing of a movie that filmgoers and literary lions alike have been waiting for: The Great Gatsby. Everyone and everything is enmeshed. There are affairs. Grand parties throw people who would not normally meet each other together. The excesses of the Jazz Age coexist with the growing economic conditions that will lead to the Great Depression. Beauty and handsomeness present themselves on the outside; there is a Picture of Dorian Gray for everyone in the mansion turrets.

Peter Kramer, psychiatrist from Brown University and author of Listening to Prozac, reflects on the life and Zelda Fitzgerald. "How crazy was she?" Kramer asks.

Here are some worthwhile books that can be ordered from the American Counseling Association (ANA):

1. Hays, D. G. (2013). Assessment in Counseling: A Guide to the Use of Psychological Assessment Procedures. Fifth Edition.

This is a bestselling text, and the latest version includes updates and changes in assessment procedures. Test selection, interpretation of findings, and communication of these to others in a professional manner are covered. More than 100 tests are described.

The issue of assessment may be particularly important for those seeking masters-level licensing in counseling fields—some disorder, e.g., schizophrenia and major depression, among others, must be seen under supervision.

Most of us, unless we have the personalities of saintliness, find ourselves in an irritable mood once in a while. Parents may be particularly prone to these episodes. One hopes that they pass without even a cranky word; although it's difficult to stifle one's facial expression.

Justin Meyer, writing in the Washington Post, brings refreshing honesty to this topic. He hangs up on customer representatives. He watches his children on the playground with the guardedness of a Papa Bear. When driving, he says, "I cut off other drivers in traffic, then flip them the bird."

Once known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is the subject of film number eighteen of twenty-one in the AMHF series on psychiatry in Hollywood.

The Three Faces of Eve covers a most controversial disorder—often outright debunked as the current (as of this writing) DSM-4 had made significant changes to the diagnosis. Characterized by two or more distinct personalities within an individual, DID involves trauma and memory. Its diagnosis overlaps borderline personality, complex PTSD, difficult-to-classify ichtal states, and undoubtedly others. Untreated, it is said DID could lead to self-harm and attempted suicides.

Notable is that Joanne Woodward won the Best Actress Oscar for this complicated three-part role.

The plot, modified from Wikipedia, follows.

As Edward R. Murrow said, there are two sides to every story. Our previous probing into an increase and acceleration in funding for research into the brain waxed positively. A different viewpoint—now taken by major pharmaceutical industries—suggests that their interest in brain research is waning. Reuters reports the following:

"Many pharmaceutical companies harbor deep doubts about whether neuroscience is worth their investment dollars as a boom period for once-highly profitable psychiatric medicines comes to an end and new drugs prove hard to find."

April is World Autism Awareness Month, with Autism Awareness Day annually on April 2.

What is Autism Spectrum? It is not easily defined, even by professionals. Modalities of treatment likewise vary and are in their infancy—even as strides are made.

AMHF calls our readers' attention to this often-misunderstood and easily misidentified diagnosis. Asperger's syndrome (or disorder), for example, is an even lesser-understood manifestation and form.

This year—especially this month—we hope you will take a moment to reflect on the myriad mysteries of the brain, especially as manifested in the diagnosis Autism.

President Barack Obama made headlines with his proposal to encourage American scientists to work toward understanding the great mysteries of the brain. Done as a massive project, this could rival past collective enterprises such as Getting a Man to the Moon; when President Kennedy suggested this, it took everyone's breath away. It looked unattainable in the early 1960s. But the country did it.

The new project has garnered unusual bipartisan support.

Since the Greek philosophers there has always been great interest in the brain. St. Thomas Aquinas believed it was necessary but not sufficient for human consciousness. Descartes believed there was an interaction between the brain and the soul: melding somewhere in the pineal gland.

Many other philosophers have speculated that consciousness is a byproduct of the brain itself and concluded that we are the products of the natural forces we are comprised of. As such, our lives our determined by the forces of chemistry, biology, genetics, and past experience.

In part 1 of this essay we examined the nature of psychological trauma, an individual's physical and psychological response to sudden, usually unexpected, potentially life-threatening events, and the emergence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) thirty-one days later. We reviewed the disruptions that may occur in the domains of good physical and mental health (reasonable mastery, caring attachments, and a meaningful purpose in life) and the physical, intrusive, and avoidant trauma symptoms that may accompany these frightening critical incidents.

In part 2 we turn our attention to the various treatment interventions that have been shown to be effective in treating trauma victims. Just as there is no one approach to treating cancer or heart disease at present, there is no single intervention for all trauma victims. Different interventions are helpful to different victims and a good treatment plan includes the individual's personal characteristics (e.g., age, gender, and previous victimization), the relevant evidence-based research, and the therapist's clinical judgment as to specific needs. Treatment interventions range from psychological first aid and crisis intervention procedures to cognitive behavior therapy, image desensitization, psychotherapy, and various medications. Each victim and therapist needs to consider the best approach(s) in any individual case. [See (1) for full review.]

Several months ago the Cuomo administration announced that budgets for nonprofit agencies serving the developmentally disabled would be cut.
This had led to an outcry from parents, community members, and those who work at these agencies. Recently it was announced that the cuts would be changed.

Although this is helpful, it still leaves most organizations with expenses that would not be covered by incoming monies. And the loss will be substantial.

Do you find the concept of a dreaming phrenologist at all funny? I didn't think so. Once upon a time, psychoanalysis was viewed as nothing but a shabby cousin of phrenology. Freud and his followers changed all this, even though the tired gags of the usually brilliant Woody Allen might leave one to believe otherwise.

Of the twenty-one films in the AMHF series, this, number seventeen "on the couch" for analysis, is the only comedy (really a satire—see below) besides Don Juan De Marco and the romantic comedy Miracle on 34th Street. But it is not an easy-to-understand comedy. It is an offbeat look at the breakthroughs of Sigmund Freud.

"Supposedly focusing on the life of Sigmund Freud (Burt Cort) by means of a fictional secret diary, the great neurologist is portrayed as being too nauseated by blood and physical anatomy to make it through medical school. Because he misunderstands what practicing medicine is all about, Freud accidentally starts psychoanalyzing his patients. His Ultimate Patient (Dick Shawn) provides him with the theories that would make him famous.

It is not inappropriate for an organization of American Mental Health Foundation—which serves persons of many nationalities and beliefs—to offer our best wishes for the Catholic Church's new pontiff, Francis I. Sponsorship of mental health programs has been an important role of the Catholic Church in the USA. Many Catholic hospitals have included psychiatric units, Catholic medical schools and universities teach upcoming physicians and psychologists, and Catholic schools watch out for the mental health needs of their students.

The world has learned of the new Pope's humility and love for the poor. Has there ever been a previous pontiff, who, while a cardinal, took the bus to work? As this means standing in the rain, huddling in the aisles with other passengers, and, of course, being late: Pope Francis is a kindred spirit to all in his encounters with the frustrations of daily living.

The Mid-Hudson Valley in New York State may be atypical from many other localities: it has the highest proportion of developmentally disabled persons in the country. Over 10,000 developmentally disabled residents from Willowbrook, Letchworth Village, and Wassaic Developmental Center have been re-integrated into the community. A large number of jobs—private and nonprofit—are part of the caring network.

Federal budget cuts, and state cuts, will hurt the families and people with developmental disabilities, as well as reduce many jobs. The Poughkeepsie Journal reports this morning.

Do you know what acrophobia is? The 1950s, like the 1940s, was a rich era for Hollywood depictions of "psychological problems" and themes—especially around words, terms, and concepts not generally known to audiences as such are today: in part, though we often do not realize it, thanks to the very movies we are putting "on the couch."

This sixteenth film of twenty-one in the AMHF series devoted to the subject of Hollywood and psychiatry, is one of the most complicated as well as wide-ranging. It is a disturbing portrait of the auteur as a middle-aged man: fixated on various archetypes and symbols of "the Female," in her various guises, thro the lens (cf. Rear Window) of "Scottie" (James Stewart), who not only has an insatiable anxiety upon finding himself in high places but also, as his doctor says, "is suffering from acute melancholia, together with a guilt complex."

Vertigo also was voted, in 2012, the number-one film of all time, knocking Citizen Kane from this venerable but questionable position (as if art could be ranked in popularity contests).

This is the fifteenth movie in the AMHF series of twenty-one. Rain Man won four Academy Awards at the sixty-first Oscars show: Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Director, and Actor—Dustin Hoffman's second in a remarkable performance.

The film revolves around the relationship between a younger, self-centered brother, likewise played to perfection by Tom Cruise, an inheritance, institutionalization, the misunderstanding of individuals on the autism spectrum, and how family ties can trump all failings. It is a feel-good movie with a message about how society reacts to individuals' unusual mental conditions.

It was seven o'clock in the morning when she awoke, after yet another terrible night's sleep with her recurring nightmares. As usual, fifteen-year-old Maureen was paralyzed from the waist down. This paralysis had terrified her at first but now she was used to it. It would go away when he left for work. The "he" in this case being her biological father. Reverend Parsons had always told her youth group to honor thy father and mother, yet she found this difficult to accept. Was she a failure at this too? Did Reverend Parsons ever make an exception?

The time frame of suffering had encompassed seven long, lonely, frightening, and physically painful years. Two times a week, fifty-two weeks a year, for seven years: seven-hundred-and-twenty-eight times she had been raped by her father. And he was forceful! Physically pinning her to her bed, forcibly entering her, physically hurting her internally. And always the ever-present butcher knife with the threat that he would slice her throat, if she ever told anyone. Her dreams of a special boyfriend who cared and a marriage that would be happy had long ago turned to ashes. Her heart was irrevocably broken.

Three weeks ago she finally summoned her courage in the face of her terror and told her mother what had been going on. The hoped-for help never came. Her mother had gone into a blind rage and accused her daughter of lying. Maureen was crushed.

Are you there God? Why me, God? Why me?...It was dark.

* * * * * *

Maureen is the victim of the medical conditions known as psychological trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Unfortunately, traumatic experiences are fairly common and disrupt the lives of many victims. Part 1 of this essay examines the general nature of psychological trauma and PTSD and part 2 presents some intervention strategies to lessen the physical and psychological pain that are associated with these conditions.

Where does the study of neurology leave off and that of psychiatry and psychology begin? (After all, Sigmund Freud was a neurologist.) Do we understand the intermingling of memory and time? What is "real" and what is "perceived"? What are some of the challenges of the aging consciousness?

Here is film number fourteen, "analyzed" in the AMHF series of twenty-one on subjects and themes relevant to its mission.

In abbreviated form, Wikpiedia summarizes this movie, based on Oliver Sacks's 1973 memoir of his work at Beth Abraham nursing home in the Bronx. Awakenings tells the true story of British neurologist Oliver Sacks, herein fictionalized as American Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams) who, in 1969, discovers beneficial effects of the then-new drug L-Dopa.

This is the thirteenth of twenty-one films in the series on psychiatry in film. The plot summary is provided by Judd Blaise Rovi.

New Zealand poet Janet Frame is the subject of Jane Campion's biographical drama, which presents a poetically evocative look at the author's turbulent life.

The film begins with Frame's childhood, showing her as a bright but odd-looking, chubby, emotionally fragile, and isolated girl with a flair for writing. Frame faces difficulty in adapting to the conventional rural life around her, and her social awkwardness only worsens as she grows older.

Have you ever felt that you were in hell? As the word pandemonium derives from John Milton's Satan and his crew in Paradise Lost—in The Screwtape Letters C. S. Lewis refers to the environment/condition as "The Kingdom of Noise" ("the mind is its own place, and can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven" as Milton also says)—so bedlam has its origin in the UK: Saint Mary of Bethlehem Hospital, London.

This film, number twelve of the twenty-one under review in the AMHF series, is equal parts horror movie and social indictment. As such regarding the latter, it has elements in common with One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Snake Pit, and to an extent Charly; regarding the former, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

The time is 1761: the age of the Enlightenment. After an acquaintance, Lord Mortimer, dies in an attempt to escape from the asylum, apothecary general Master George Sims (Boris Karloff, a fictionalized version of an infamous head physician at Bethlem, John Monro) appeases Mortimer by having his so-called loonies put on a show for him. Mortified by the treatment of the patients, Mortimer's associate Nell Bowen seeks the help of Whig politician John Wilkes to reform the asylum.

A young man with Down syndrome has died at the very hands of the police he idolized, the Washington Post reports. The death of Robert Ethan Saylor, aetat. twenty-six, occurred while being handcuffed with at least three set of cuffs as he was being taken by three deputies from a theater in Frederick County, Maryland. Previously he had been confronted, the Post said, for refusing to leave a movie after it was over.

"Late last week, the Chief Medical Examiner's Office in Baltimore ruled Saylor's death a homicide as a result of asphyxia. Since then, the case has ignited the fears of parents of children with Down syndrome, caught the attention of advocacy groups and left one family questioning how a young man who loved learning about criminal investigations could become the subject of one.